Video: Hu-Obama Rap Battle…Over?

While the pundits ponder which country is likely to come out ahead in this week’s summit between Chinese President Hu Jintao and U.S. President Barack Obama, Asia’s most animated commentators have already made up their minds.

As readers may recall, last November, with a Group of 20 meeting about to convene in Seoul, Taiwan’s Next Media Animation released a video in which cartoon versions of Mr. Hu and Mr. Obama matched each other rhyme-for-rhyme in a hip-hop face-off over currency.

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Written by NMA’s international content manager, Angelica Oung, and scored by Taiwanese rapper Shen-Yi, the “U.S.-Sino Currency Rap Battle” went viral, despite—or maybe because of—its wonky references to global finance. To wit, this passage from Mr Hu:

“I was a little worried about that Bretton Woods line,” Ms. Oung told China Real Time not long after the video had been released. “But people actually liked the parts where we geeked out.”

Nearly as remarkable as its geek factor, however, was the video’s balance. Despite Ms. Oung’s being “an unrepentant Keynesian,” as her conservative boss Mark Simon describes her, she and the rest of the NMA team decided to write the battle as a draw. Mr. Obama (backed by a machine-gun toting Timothy “Timmy G” Geithner) and Mr. Hu (trailing a pair of vicious pandas) go back and forth on yuan revaluation and quantitative easing without either side clearly coming out on top.

No more.

In NMA’s latest take on Sino-U.S. relations, released Monday, Mr. Obama has gone from Mr. Hu’s rap nemesis to his valet-parking attendant, humbly greeting Mr. Hu as the Chinese leader arrives in Washington in a stealth jet only to be thrown the keys and told “Don’t scratch it.”

The change in tone, Ms. Oung says, was intentional. “In the past, before these meetings, China would usually make concessions ahead of time—release a few dissidents from prison, for example—to smooth the way for negotiations,” she says. “This time, they haven’t done that, which to us says they’re feeling confident,” she adds, noting Mr. Hu’s recent strong statement about the dollar being outdated. “Now it’s the U.S. scrambling to please China.”

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